An islamic alliance: Ali Dinar and the Sanusiyya, 1906-1916

The subject of this book is the defense, by devoutly Islamic leaders, of one of the last parts of the African continent to be overrun by the imperial European ‘scramble for Africa’ during the decade that culminated in the First World War, a region which extended south from the Mediterranean coast of Cyrenaica for more than two thousand miles to embrace parts of northern Chad, and the sultanate of Dar Fur in the western portion of the modern Republic of the Sudan. The defense of an embattled Dar al-Islam is the theme that unifies the documents presented in the book, thirty pieces of diplomatic correspondence between Ali Dinar, the prince who restored an independent Dar Fur, and the contemporary leaders of the Sanusi brotherhood, based from 1902 in the southern Libyan oasis of Kufra. The first part of the book is an interpretive essay, organized chronologically, that places the documents and the information they contain in a wider historical context. The second part presents the documents themselves, with English translations and notes.